Chaos in Europe as the New Silk Road Demonstrates the Solution

The former mainstays of the European Union — France, the UK and Germany — continue to unravel at an incredible pace, even while the momentum of the New Silk Road escalates an an equally incredible pace. It is blatantly obvious that the one is the solution to the other. Helga Zepp-LaRouche noted yesterday that many voices are now taking note of the obvious — China's model has lifted 800 million people out of poverty and is taking the process out to the world through their Belt and Road Initiative, while the European Union is suffering economic decay, the collapse of wages, and political chaos. Who would debate in favor of the current western model other than morons?

The International Labor Organization released its Global Wage Report for 2017 at the end of November, showing that global wage growth was the lowest since 2008, close to zero, even though it was 4.3% in emerging markets, primarily due to the Belt and Road process. Wages actually declined in France, Germany, Italy and Spain (Italy and Spain have now embraced the Belt and Road).

On the other side of the debate, a study by Aid Data at the College of William and Mary on "Chinese Infrastructure Projects and the Diffusion of Economic Activity in Developing Countries," concluded that, unlike the inequality resulting from many of the Western investment projects in the developing sector: "We find that Chinese development projects in general, and Chinese transportation projects in particular, reduce economic inequality within and between subnational localities," and "produce economic spillovers that lead to a more equal distribution of economic activity." The study was financed by the UN, the Singapore Ministry of Education, USAID, and foundations in the US and Europe. Conferences promoting the Belt and Road are now taking place in Asia, Africa, Europe and Ibero-America at the pace of about a dozen every week.

So much for the chatter about Chinese "imperialism" and "debt traps."

In France, the Yellow Vest protests are not slowing down despite President Macron's capitulation on Monday to a few of their demands. More demonstrations are planned for the weekend. The left wing parties have tabled a call for a vote of no confidence in the government, which will take place Thursday afternoon. Although it is unlikely to pass, it will force the government to reveal their budget for next year, a budget which is expected to push spending far past the EU-dictated limit of 3% of GDP. The EU has already said that, unlike their open conflict with Italy over Italy's refusal to cut their budget (at the expense of the population and the economy), the EU does not plan to criticize Macron for doing the same thing, to save his skin.

On the conservative side, Marine Le Pen, head of the French National Rally party, tweeted that Macron made a few concessions, but he "refuses to admit that his management model is being challenged. This model represents excessive globalization, unfair competition, widespread free trade, and massive immigration with all its social and cultural implications. In short, Macron just made a strategic retreat!"

The situation is similar in London, where Prime Minister Theresa May was subjected to a vote of no confidence within her own party this evening. She survived the vote — 200 to 117 — but she had to pledge not to lead the party into the next scheduled national election in 2022. Many observers to the process warned that if as many as 100 Tories voted against her it would be very difficult for her to stay in power. Having cancelled the scheduled Parliamentary vote on her fake-Brexit plan on Tuesday, admitting it would have been soundly defeated, she is far from safe in her position. Sources in the UK have told EIR that no one wants her job at this point, from any party, since there is no way out of the hole she has created for the country by keeping the Brexit process secret until the last minute.

At the same time, the scandal of the British government-financed subversion operation known as the Integrity Initiative, and its parent group Initiative for Statecraft, is exploding in the face of both the government and the British intelligence agencies. Set up to run covert operations in every country in Europe and the US, to poison any constructive relations with Russia, they have now been caught attacking the opposition Labour Party, including calling Jeremy Corbyn a "useful idiot" to the Russians — just as MI6 ran covert efforts to disrupt the 2016 US election, falsely painting Trump as a Russian stooge. The hacked material is acknowledged to be accurate, but the Foreign Office has pathetically claimed that the leak was a Russian dirty trick — admitting, as usual, that there is no evidence, but it simply must be the Russians!

The choice is clear to all those who agree with Friedrich Schiller that we must all be "patriots of our nations and citizens of the world." The dying power of Empire must be put out of its misery through a new Bretton Woods, Glass Steagall legislation, and a return to scientific and industrial progress, while the geopolitics of Empire and war is replaced with the win-win policies characterized by the New Silk Road. Now is the time.

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